SELBY Town Council caretaker Blue Wilson has reached North Shields in her marathon charity trek around the entire British coastline.
That means she has clocked up almost 350 miles so far. And she hopes to get a good few more miles under her belt this week (beginning December 28), when she will spend three more days hiking.
Blue, 47, has already raised more than £500 for her two chosen charities, Surfers Against Sewage and marine conservation charity Sea Changers.
But she admits that she's got a long way to go yet before completing her marathon trek.
She aims to walk the entire coastline of Britain and Northern Ireland - and even some of the major islands.
Estimates vary as to just how long a trek it will be - but it could be 11,000 miles or even more, she believes.
She's determined not to take any shortcuts, by using boats to skip across long inlets. She'll follow the coast around, and use bridges when she finds them.
"So it will take a while!" she admitted.
In fact, it could take her several years.
Her three step-children are grown up, but she still has her job – and her mum. So she’s doing the walk in bits - a few days here, a week there. She estimates that the whole round-the-coast trek could take five years.
She's set herself a target of raising £4,000 in each year of her trek - as much as £20,000 by the time she finishes.
She set out on the latest leg of her walk, the 42 miles from Hartlepool to North Shields, just as Storm Barra was expected to hit.
She expected the worst, weather-wise. "But actually it cleared away, and it was lovely and sunny," she said.
She thought she would have to detour into Newcastle to cross the Tyne on the Millennium Bridge - but instead managed to find a pedestrian route under the river.
"That was exciting!" she said. "It saved me a good few miles!"
To break things up, Blue has been doing her walk in two directions - heading north on one stint, then south on her next.
So this week she'll be heading down to Lincolnshire to continue her southerly walk. She'll be walking from Croft Bank below Skegness towards Boston and then the Wash.
Her last stint in Lincolnshire was amongst some of the hardest walking yet.
She pushed past Skegness to Gibraltar Point, but then was unable to cross an inlet. So she walked back to Skegness, then took a busy A-Road towards Wainfleet. "I was on a grass verge, with lots of lorries going past!" she admitted.
Well, no-one ever said walking the British coast would be easy...
To follow Blue’s blog, visit her Blue-Wilson-Walks-The-UK-Coastline page on Facebook.
To make a donation to her chosen marine charities, visit her just Just Giving page: justgiving.com/team/teambluewilsonwalks
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